LIFE-NET NEWS

by Ret Z.

Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices

November 19, 2008	No Profit; No Proceeds
Volume 12 Number 12	All-Volunteer

"Give a family a fish, and they'll eat a meal;  give them a Net, and they'll have fish for Life."

Tent Cities Proliferate As Seldom Before

From Seattle WA to Athens GA, homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments -- tent cities -- in a generation. Nearly 61% of local and state homeless coalitions say they've experienced a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. The group says the problem has worsened since the report's April release, with foreclosures mounting, prices rising, and the job market tightening.       "It's clear that poverty and homelessness have increased," said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the coalition. "The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession, and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future."       The phenomenon of encampments has caught advocacy groups somewhat by surprise, largely because of how quickly they have sprung up. "What you're seeing is encampments that I haven't seen since the 80s," said Paul Boden of the Western Regional Advocacy Project.       The relatively tony city of Santa Barbara CA has given over a parking lot to people who sleep in cars and vans.       The city of Fresno CA is trying to manage several proliferating tent cities, including an encampment where people have made shelters out of scrap wood.       In Portland OR and Seattle, homeless advocacy groups have paired with nonprofits or faith-based groups to manage tent cities as outdoor shelters.       Other cities where tent cities have either appeared or expanded include Chattanooga TN, San Diego CA, and Columbus OH.       In Seattle, which is experiencing a building boom and an influx of affluent professionals in neighborhoods the working class once owned, homeless encampments have been springing up -- in remote places to avoid police sweeps. "What's happening in Seattle is what's happening everywhere else -- on steroids," said Tim Harris, executive director of Real Change. Homeless people and their advocates have organized three tent cities at City Hall in recent months to call attention to the homeless and protest the sweeps. These are acts of militancy, said Harris, "that we really haven't seen around homeless activism since the early '90s."       In Reno, officials decided to let the tent city be, because shelters were already filled. There's no census of the city's homeless, "but we do know that the soup kitchens are serving hundreds more meals a day and that we have more people who are homeless than we can remember," said Jodi Royal-Goodwin, the city's redevelopment agency director.       Many tent dwellers had come to Reno hoping for casino jobs. But the casinos were laying off, not hiring. Says Royal-Goodwin, "Sometimes I think we need to put out an ad: 'No, we don't have any more jobs than you do.'"       Source: MSNBC

Oncoming Kyrgyzstan Winter Raises UN Concern

United Nations humanitarian officials are voicing concern for an estimated 700,000 people in Kyrgyzstan, with many lacking decent shelter and facilities as the often bitter Central Asian winter approaches. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that the hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people in Kyrgyzstan include 580,000 people classed as food insecure and 250,000 people at risk due to electricity and water shortages.       Central Asian winters can be extremely harsh, particularly in the mountainous regions of southern Kyrgyzstan. Those regions were shaken early last month by a lethal earthquake.       OCHA said UN agencies and their non-governmental organization partners are collaborating to complement Kyrgyz government efforts to devise a response plan to ensure minimum standards of basic services through the winter. Implementation of the plan will require some $18 million.       Source: United Nations

Food Bank Can't Keep Up with Need in Vineland

As their shelves lose weight with every item given out, those who run the Vineland Ministerial Food Bank gain a heavy mental burden: Without the cans, boxes, and other offerings that normally line the shelves at the First United Methodist Church's community food bank, volunteers must turn away the local families who have come to depend on it.       "There's more and more people going to food banks and we're not getting the food," said food bank manager Richard Quay. "The food supply nationwide is down. The biggest thing is the economy. There are more and more people out of work."       The food bank is left handing out less food some days or even closing early, Quay said. And, for the first time since Quay started working there about a decade ago, they won't be handing out Thanksgiving baskets.       "We have many neighbors that rely on the generosity of others to help provide them with the food they need," said food bank representative Adrienne Possenti. She said that the volunteers reported that the number of people coming to the food bank tripled in July.       Quay said the food bank is open for just two hours on Wednesday and Friday mornings and can serve between 30 and 50 families. The facility can only give a family enough food for about three days, and families are barred from getting food from the bank more than once monthly. "Sometimes it's tough to try to talk to these people and say you can't do it. You try."       Source: Vineland Daily Journal

Zimbabwe Sees Another Poor Grain Harvest Ahead

It rained in most parts of Zimbabwe early this month, signalling the official start of the planting season in this troubled country. Most farmers start putting the maize seed in the ground during the first week of November to take advantage of the first rains. But agricultural experts said that the lashing downpours, which came after a serious heat wave, would count for nothing, as the Harare government was ill-prepared to take advantage of it.       "The country does not have foreign currency to procure fertilizer, seed, fuel, farming implements, and spare parts for tractors and other farming implements," said Renson Gasela, an agricultural expert who is also the agriculture spokesman for the small, breakaway faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).       "If the truth be told, nothing is happening on the farms. Some of those black farmers given land by Mugabe are content with hunting the few wildlife left on the properties instead of tilling land to feed hungry Zimbabweans. The country is starting another disastrous agriculture season."       Nelson Chamisa, the spokesman for the main MDC faction headed by Morgan Tsvangirai, concurred, noting that the little fertilizer, seed, and fuel that trickle in from China, Mugabe's all-weather friend, was quickly being diverted to the farms given to big-wigs in his ZANU-PF party.       The UN estimates that between 5 and 5.5 million Zimbabweans, or nearly half the population, will need emergency food rations next year. Last year's harvests failed because of fertilizer and fuel shortages. Currently, about 5.1 million people are reportedly receiving food handouts from local and international food relief agencies.       The continuing ejection of white farmers from their land has not helped matters. Elsewhere, beneficiaries of Mugabe's land reform suspected of voting for Tsvangirai are being pushed out of properties at a time they are supposed to be readying the land for planting.       At the same time, a substantial bailout promised by the South African government to bankroll Zimbabwe's agricultural season has not materialized because it is subject to the fulfilment of a precarious power-sharing agreement between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.       Aid agencies claim that the government is continuing to hinder their efforts to deliver food. Some Zimbabweans are said to be surviving by foraging for wild fruits and edible roots.       Source: Institute for War & Peace Reporting

Mysterious Donation Bins Spark New Local Laws

Donation drop boxes have appeared at some of Mark Grecco's Washington Township NJ retail properties almost overnight. The Realtor and property manager said the unsightly metal bins that solicit charity donations have cropped up without notice behind shopping centers such as Whitman Plaza and Peppercorn Plaza. And in some cases, it has taken dozens of phone calls to the listed owner or self-proclaimed charity to have the bins removed.       "At one point, we had five boxes and not one of them had permission to be there," Grecco said. "It seems like they just drop them where they want."       Soon, a local measure will prevent groups from dropping these bins on private property without the owner's permission. The township council has introduced an ordinance that would require a charity to obtain a permit for $25 and have the property owner's consent before placing a bin.       The ordinance is in response to state legislation that will go into effect next year. The legislation, sponsored by Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, who is also mayor of Washington Township, makes it legal for municipalities to require certain information from the charitable companies before giving out a permit. It also gives the township authority to remove the bins, if they're placed illegally, at the expense of the bin's owner. Those companies could face fines of up to $20,000 for violations.       "I've talked to many business owners who say these things often show up in the middle of the night and they're afraid to move them because they'd be doing something against charity," Moriarty said. "But a lot of these bins sell the clothing overseas. They're profitable ventures and only contribute a tiny portion of money to the charity that lends its name to the bin."       As part of the permitting process, the companies would be required to give the township the location of the bin and explain how the items collected in the bin would be used, sold, or dispersed. They'd also be required to submit written consent from the property owner where the bin will be located, and provide a name and phone number of any other companies that profit from the donations. The permit and its expiration date would have to be displayed on the bin, along with the name and address of the bin owner and other beneficiaries, and a statement explaining how the goods are dispersed and where any profits go.       "The bottom line is that most of these collection agencies are masquerading as charities, and they're for-profit companies that make money off the donations," Moriarty said. "We ought to know when we go to these, what percentage goes to charities, and who those 'charities' really are."       Source: Gloucester County Times

'Battle Against Hunger Lies in a Seed'

A noted Filipino agriculture scientist said the country's salvation from hunger comes in the form of the lowly seed. In an article to be published later this month, Dr Calixto Protacio, a US-trained professor of agronomy at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, argued, "Biotech crops are the ultimate products of science-based agriculture. The development of biotech crops harnessed almost every scientific discipline from the crop sciences to genetics, biochemistry, and even computer science. It will be hard to conjure a more visible product of the sciences in agriculture other than the biotech crops."       Protacio added that the biotech seed is a weapon that reaches the farmer, who does not need to be trained on improved technology to benefit from the crops grown through genetic improvement. It has been the bane of many countries, he said, that improved technology seldom reaches the intended targets, and that extension workers are not trained appropriately to impart the new knowledge.       "Biotechnology's potential is to bring science to the countryside even without extension workers. How? Just by giving the farmer [the] improved seed! If we can incorporate into a seed all that science has to offer, then the fruits of science would have reached the farmer. This scheme fits in the natural cycle of agriculture where a farmer will secure the best seed he can get."       Besides the seeds, he added that the biotech product may also be a tissue-cultured plantlet. "Even if produced by tissue culture, especially if by somatic embryogenesis, synthetic seeds can also be produced by encapsulating the somatic embryo in a suitable gel-like medium usually along with everything that the embryo will need -- just like a natural seed.       "So far the promise of biotechnology has only been realized commercially in corn, albeit partly at that. Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) corn's built-in crop protection capability has reduced the chemical-related expenses for growing the crop, and the farmers seem to find it cost effective. The herbicide resistance also incorporated in corn is also relevant to our aging farmers, as less labor is required to weed the extensive corn fields."       The biotech expert said that the government has been working hard to develop Golden Rice, which has genes that carry vitamin A, to enable more and more poor communities to benefit from the nutrients. Vitamin A is crucial in battling blindness.       Source: Business Mirror

Life-Net Radio Profiled in Major Newspaper

When Life-Net Radio passed the 500-episode mark, one of the Philadelphia metro region's biggest newspapers took note. On Sunday, November 2, the Courier-Post ran a profile in its South Jersey Living section. The article bore the headline, "SJ FACES: Jonathan Paul Sank". The piece purported to be a profile of me as an interesting South Jersey person to watch, but I was relieved to see that it paid less attention to me, more to the show, and a final note favorable to my Boss, you know, the One who somehow manages to use me despite my numerous flaws. Here's the piece, slightly amended:       Charity pays in different ways for Jonathan Paul Sank.       Every Wednesday at 9 pm since 1998, the Maple Shade resident has taken the pseudonym Retiarius Zogreso -- Ret Z for short -- and hosted "Life-Net Radio," a show on WTMR 800 AM that tackles the subject of poverty from any angle asked of him.       Sank, 50, devotes time each week dedicating the show to any person or organization willing to present something relevant to poverty and foot the Camden station's $55 fee.       The show originated as a spinoff to a friend's show and now streams worldwide from the Web site www.lifenetradio.org.       For his non-profit production, Sank received the President's Lifetime of Service Award in May, an honor given by the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation through the Volunteer Center of Gloucester County. The award is given to volunteers whose work spans more than 4,000 hours.       Sank works part time at a computer recycling nonprofit.       Q: Where did the name Retiarius Zogreso originate?       A: I started with a newsletter and went with an exotic-sounding pen name. I didn't know I would ever go on the radio. Retiarius is the type of Roman gladiator who fought with a net and Zogreso is Biblical Greek for "will capture." Put together, "I capture the demon of poverty with a net of many voices."       Q: Do you air any organization that you oppose?       A: All the time. I air plenty of shows I disagree with. It's a free-speech show. I put myself on their side for the week. They're my guest and for that week I'm their friend. But next week, I may have someone who's totally opposite.       Q: The show revolves around poverty. Is it hard to keep it from becoming depressing?       A: That's surprisingly easy. There's a lot of fun stuff going on. Cathedral Kitchen just opened a new location -- a celebratory event.       Q: What's the most rewarding part of your job?       A: I'm constantly surrounded by good people. I have to reach out to people trying to do something positive. That means I have to associate with good people. And, hopefully, a little of that good rubs off on me.       Q: Do you air all Christian denominations?       A: I'll air anything that's related to poverty. One of our frequent contributors is an Islamic center. We get a lot of Lutheran contributions. We don't get as many radicals as you'd expect and I would like to see more Republicans, a rare bird in this business, the anti-poverty business. I want to balance this thing, but I can only work with who I get.       Q: You celebrated your 500th episode in October and have broadcast three more since. How long do you plan to broadcast?       A: I often get near a point of giving up and then I say, "Where there's God's will, there's a way." And then I keep trying and look for a way. So far, a way has opened up every time. If it ever has to die, I expect that the Lord will have something else for me to do.       Source: Courier-Post

To Do a 'World of Good', Go Shopping!

Since 2004, the company World of Good has helped merge consumerism and social consciousness by partnering with retailers to market fair-trade handcrafted items. "It's actually a program that was started by a young man and his wife to help women get out of prostitution," says Priya Haji, 38, the CEO and co-founder of the company, based near San Francisco, that sells handmade goods from around the world.       Like any entrepreneur, she wants to set sales records and improve her bottom line. But for Haji, the measure of success goes beyond how many purses and pieces of jewelry she can sell to American consumers; her plan reaches worldwide, deep into poor communities.       "Primarily, it employs people who are not educated, haven't been to school, and probably either rural or urban poor," she says. "And so by creating employment for them and helping them create sustainable livelihoods, they can then invest in the education of their children, improve their community."       The company's goal is to empower and enrich poor women in hundreds of communities, using social values instilled by her parents and business techniques learned at Berkeley: "When I got into business school, it was really with the idea of, how are we going to use business to do good?"       While World of Good is out to improve working and living conditions in poor nations, it also is beholden to its venture capital investors. Haji believes she can make a profit and still benefit the poor. The producers are mostly women in third world countries like Vietnam, who make items by hand and would normally sell a few of them for very little money in local shops. But World of Good, working through local producer groups, buys the products and sells them at 1,500 retail outlets in the US.       Items are also sold on the Internet, which is a far larger market than producers could ever reach before. World of Good recently partnered with eBay, the online auction and sales site. EBay manager Robert Chatwani was visiting family in India and admiring handmade jewelry when he came up with an idea: "How can these artisans and producers connect to a global marketplace? And why can't they be on eBay, just like millions of other consumers and sellers are?       "[Haji and I] crossed paths and realized almost instantly that we should be working together. We no longer have to think about shopping and giving as mutually exclusive."       In 2005, they joined forces using technology to connect sellers in undeveloped lands to buyers with computers. Today, eBay lists thousands of items from World of Good and other so-called ethical artisan groups. Says Haji, "What we've actually found is that there are millions of customers that are looking, not only for global style and cool products, but for products they can feel good about buying."       Source: NewsHour

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Some 691,000 children went hungry in America sometime in 2007, a 50% increase over 2006, while close to one in eight Americans struggled to feed themselves adequately even before this year's sharp economic downturn, according to a USDA report released Monday. Families with the highest rates of hunger were headed by single mothers. Of the 36.2 million adults and children who struggled with hunger during the year, almost a third, 11.9 million, went hungry at some point -- a number that has grown by more than 40% since 2000. (Associated Press) New affordable housing regulations adopted this summer will cost towns across New Jersey an estimated $2 billion a year over the next decade to fulfill, according to a report issued by the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services. The OLS, which helps lawmakers analyze policy and legislation, reviewed the affordable housing funding issue at the request of the NJ Senate Republicans' caucus. A number of Republican lawmakers have criticized the new affordable housing rules. Advocacy groups such as the Fair Share Housing Center and the Housing and Community Development Network argue that the new regulations may need to be tweaked, but not overhauled. The state League of Municipalities and the Sierra Club -- groups that often disagree on issues -- agree in this instance that the new rules are based on a faulty methodology that exaggerates how much developable land municipalities have. (Gannett) The US Conference of Catholic Bishops will cease funding the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) after allegations of embezzlement and voter registration fraud were raised against the New Orleans-based group in the 2008 election, said church leaders on November 11. The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), an anti-poverty branch of the Conference, had been giving ACORN about $1 million each year through grants to 40 local affiliates, according to Bishop Roger Morin. CCHD first suspended funding in June, according to Morin, after officials learned that an ACORN official had embezzled about $1 million from the group. Morin said the suspension will continue in the future because "we simply had too many questions about these serious matters to continue any funding of ACORN groups." (Religion News Service) The ten recipients of the 2008 Food Stamp Hunger Champions Awards were announced on October 28. The awardees had shown exemplary service in conducting outreach activities and assisting eligible clients to obtain nutrition benefits in the Food Stamp Program (now known as SNAP: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). The top two recipients, the "Mentors", were the Monterey County Office of Social and Employment Services (Salinas CA) and the Lake County Family Community Resource Center (Park City IL). The eight "Honorable Mentors" included the Department of Public Welfare, Delancey District (Philadelphia PA). (USDA)

Life-Net News Extras

'People's Champ' Out of Prison

Former Camden City Councilman Ali Sloan El, convicted of taking $36,000 in bribes from an FBI agent two years ago, has returned to a Philadelphia halfway house after spending 15 of his 20-month sentence in Edgewood Federal Prison in South Carolina. "Lean, but not mean, and definitely a changed man," said the self-described "peoples' champ" about his 40-pound weight loss in an interview at the Aramingo Diner in North Philadelphia.       The experience was so wasteful and degrading that Sloan-El hopes to share it with young people as an incentive for them to avoid crime, and to keep them out of harm's way. "It was minimum security with a barbed wire around the premises. Three of us in a cube about the size of a small bathroom, a dismal crypt. Terrible food, terrible library, terrible health care, no gym, and a tyrant in charge," said the former politician who described himself as a model prisoner.       Making a "pie" with a left-over apple and a sleeve of vanilla cookies in a microwave was the treat of the week.       "If you broke any rules, they sent you next door to medium security, which was worse." Serving time in a South Carolina "wilderness with trees, snakes and spiders ..." was the cruelest part, said Sloan-El who received no visitors because of the distance from his hometown.       Sloan El, who spent decades coaching Tee-Ball and Little League baseball in his Whitman Park neighborhood, coached a team of prisoners at the federal detention camp. One of his few possessions is a stained, white baseball cap with the word "coach" hand-lettered across the front.       Sloan-El expects to be kept at the halfway house until Dec. 28. Then he plans to work in a Parkside restaurant owned by friends.       "I'm taking this very slowly before I jump back full speed into this mad world," said Sloan El, 54, an outspoken councilman in Camden between 1994 and 2005. He was replaced by William Spearman. In 1994 he ran for mayor and "lost by a landslide" to Mayor Gwendolyn Faison.       Sloan El is the fourth high-ranking city official to be convicted of taking money. "I am an ex-con and I'm not proud of it," said Sloan-El who pleaded guilty as charged. "But after I rebuild my relationship with my wife and my children, become a better husband and father, I will work on reintroducing myself to my community."       Barred from future elective office, Sloan El said he will work politically behind the scenes. Within three years, he hopes to head the city's Democratic Party.       A follower of Islam, Sloan El said he wants to be "an ambassador" for the incarcerated and those living on the edge who could easily wind up behind bars. "It's heart breaking to see these guys paying with their lives because of a drug culture this country perpetuates. They leave with no vocational skills and full of hate. I feel obligated to take this message to as many people as I can."       Source: Courier-Post

Experts Advise on World Hunger

Some mothers choose what their children will eat. Others choose which children will eat and which will die. Those mothers forced to make the grim life-or-death choices are the impoverished women Patricia Wolff, executive director of Meds & Food for Kids, encounters during her frequent trips to Haiti.       Wolff thinks hunger can be conquered. Her group produces "Medika Mamba," an energy-dense peanut butter food that's designed to ensure Haitian children survive childhood. Medika Mamba is easy to make, store, preserve, and distribute, she says.       "It just takes the will to do it," she says of eliminating hunger. "We didn't have enough money for infrastructure, schools, but all of a sudden, we had all of this money for Wall Street."       Author Raj Patel says the right to food should be seen as a human right. But, he says, powerful corporate food distributors control too much of the world's food to ensure a robust global supply.       Patel says, "There's more food per person in 2008 than there's ever been in history. The problem is not food but how we distribute it."       Other causes for the rise in global hunger have been documented. They include surging oil costs, droughts, hurricanes, and depletion of raw materials needed to keep the food system intact.       "A lot of people have begun to understand at various levels that the food system, as it is, can't go on," says author Paul Roberts. "If the rest of the world were to eat like we do, the planet would collapse. There's been this unspoken assumption that the rest of the world won't eat meat like we do. That doesn't go over well in countries like China."       Fixing our food system would be similar to weaning ourselves from our addiction to oil, Roberts says. It's going to require innovation, heavy business involvement, and changes in public policy. He says that people are going to have to find ways to grow food with less fertilizer and water and to use less energy to store and transport food.       Much of this innovation will have to be driven not just by activists and aid workers, but by savvy business people, he says. "It's going to have to be profitable, or the market won't be interested in it."       Wolff says the practice of big foreign aid agencies shipping food to poor countries like Haiti needs to be modified. Food has become too expensive to produce, ship and store, she says. "You can't count on big aid agencies showing up to save everybody. Not everybody can do it, and when they do it, it's not soon enough and not long enough." She suggests that more groups teach local people in poor places how to produce their own crops.       Source: CNN

A Fresh Look at the Rich-Poor Kids Health Gap

"The public should not be shocked that children in poor families have worse health than children in better-off families ... However, it will be startling to most people to learn that children in middle-class families have worse health than children in wealthier families," said Paula Braveman, one of the authors of a new report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America.       The authors warned that the sources of health disparities are so entrenched that a major expansion of health care alone would not close the gap. They said that although policymakers are focused on improving health care, the problem needs to be tackled by changing underlying social conditions.       "Even if we had equal access to health care, we'd still have disparities and shortfalls in health," said David Williams, the commission's staff director. "It’s not just access to health care, it's where you live, learn, work, play and worship."       For example, the report authors said, children in unsafe neighborhoods have less access to parks and other recreational centers, and grocery stores in poor neighborhoods probably don't sell healthy foods like fresh fruit. Children born to less-educated parents also are more likely to pick up unhealthy habits and be exposed to secondhand smoke.       The report also compared numbers of children with "optimal" health -- based on parents' assessments of whether their children's health ranged from "excellent" to "poor" -- with family incomes ranging from the federal poverty level to those making more than four times as much. (The report authors said using parents' assessments highly correlates with more objective measures of health.)       Nationwide, 15.9% of children aren't at optimal health. Among the states, Texas has the biggest percentage of children with less-than-optimal health -- 22.8% -- followed closely by California (22.5%) and Nevada (20.4%). Once income is considered, the three states also have the largest percentages of poor kids with less than good health: 44.1% in Texas, 43.5% in Nevada, 41% in California.       This results in some of the biggest "health gaps" between the percentage of poor and rich children with imperfect health, according to the report. In Texas, 44.1% of poor children have less-than-optimal health, while only 6.7% of children in high-income families are at that level.       The states with the biggest health gaps comprise a wide swath of the South and Southwest. States in the upper Midwest, northern Great Plains, and Northeast have the smallest gaps between poor and rich kids when it comes to health.       Source: Stateline

Sat Photos Show Destruction of Tribe's Land

Satellite photos taken in mid-October reveal how hundreds of hectares of forest belonging to Paraguay's last uncontacted Indians have been devastated in the last thirty days alone. The photos show how a Brazilian company, Yaguarete Pora S.A., has destroyed a brand new patch of forest belonging to the Indians, called the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode, the last uncontacted people in South America outside the Amazon. Photos taken in September did not detect such activity.       The devastation of the Totobiegosode's forest is rapidly accelerating. The amount of land cleared is now more than double what it was in May this year, when earlier satellite photos were taken. It is being destroyed by Yaguarete Pora SA and another Brazilian company, River Plate SA, mainly to graze cattle for beef.       The photos have caused outrage in Paraguay and led to a mass Indian plea to Paraguay's new president, the ex-bishop Fernando Lugo. In a statement to Lugo, the destruction of the Totobiegosode's land was denounced as a "violation of (the Indians') cultural, environmental and territorial rights."       The Totobiegosode live in sub-tropical forest known as "the Chaco". The number of uncontacted Indians, who are exceedingly vulnerable to any form of contact with outsiders, is not known.       Survival's director, Stephen Corry, said today, "Just look at the sat photos! It's impossible not to see what is going on there -- the flagrant destruction of the Totobiegosode's home, right 'before our eyes'. How can president Lugo ignore this?"       Source: Survival International

To Improve Rural Life, Merge Some Villages

Adapted from a piece by lawyer and real estate broker Kirk Wickersham, who has been a planning and economic development consultant throughout rural Alaska:       Billions of dollars and 37 years after the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, life in many small villages is still not viable. A village of 200 or 300 people, only half of whom are adults, cannot offer adequate education or health care. It can't provide law enforcement or effective local government. There are few social services, minimal intervention for drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, and sexual assault.       Most villages are so small that food, fuel -- anything shipped in -- is unbelievably expensive. There are few jobs and no real prospects for the future. Some villages are eroding into the sea.       As a result, many Natives are leaving the village for the city, where they face a different set of problems. Despite all the state has done, and all that rural Alaskans have done, most small villages will probably not be around after another generation or so.       There is a better way. Out of 270-some villages, the state has identified 18 that would be viable centers for new boroughs. We should be concentrating our resources in those communities.       Let's start with a regional magnet school that fosters the local Native culture while fully preparing its graduates for college, the military, or a good job. Open an Internet learning center for vocational programs from the university.       Set up a borough government, even if the state has to cover the cost for a while, and empower local people to make their own public decisions. Encourage the Native regional corporation and nonprofit to move some jobs back home, so shareholders can make money and still participate in their subsistence lifestyle.       Get the Native Health Service to put in a clinic, one with a doctor and a dentist. Station a trooper. Concentrate social services like alcohol and drug programs. Get the Denali Commission to focus its spending for water, sewer, power, and other utilities in these communities, and then build good solid housing.       These will become magnet communities where rural Alaskans can get the education, services, and jobs they need for a successful life, surrounded and enriched by their own culture and natural environment. There are already precedents.       A program like this would use carrots, not sticks. It would not require more financial and human resources, just a focus on the goal and a concentration of our existing resources. It would be less expensive and more effective than our present scattershot efforts.       Source: Anchorage Daily News

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"We are seeing an increase every day in pets surrendered by people who have lost their homes or can't afford to care for them anymore," said Gloucester County Animal Shelter director Bill Lombardi. "In September, we had 107 cats and 27 dogs surrendered, and in October we brought in 128 cats and 45 dogs. This is supposed to be our slow time." Lombardi said people in bad financial situations should look into temporary lodging for their pets at the homes of family and friends as a first option because there's no guarantee each animal will find a new home. Lombardi said he's never seen anything like the current wave of surrenders and noted that adoptions have also slightly decreased. (Gloucester County Times) Two major corporations revealed new anti-hunger partnerships in Texas early this month: In Houston, supermarket giant Kroger Inc has agreed to sell $1.5 million of staple foods "at cost" to a partnership formed by the national groups Feeding America and the Salvation Army, each of which will contribute half the necessary funds and send the food through food banks to Ike victims. In San Antonio, the San Antonio Food Bank announced it was one of the first food banks to receive a state-of-the-art "mobile pantry" funded by Kraft Foods Inc. The mobile pantry concept, which Kraft is funding on a national scale, allows food banks to distribute food in places with little infrastructure. (Texans Against Hunger) Several cases of trafficking Uzbek citizens to neighboring countries have been uncovered, according to a film entitled "Deceived People" broadcast by Uzbek TV's Yoshlar channel on November 10. The film said that two residents of Uzbekistan's Jizzakh Region "deceived" two natives of the region's Forish District by promising them well-paid jobs in Kazakhstan. "They took Sherzod Khudoyberdiyev, Anvar Jorayev, and another six people to Kazakhstan's Shymkent town," the film said. They sold those people to a person for $2,000 US, it added. The film also said that a resident of the eastern Uzbek town of Namangan has taken citizens Zayniddin Fazliddinov and 22 year-old Muqaddas Khudoyberdiyeva to the Kazakh town of Zhambyl, promising them well-paid jobs but making them work in a bakery there. (UzReport) For three Saturdays in November, guests of the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort in Michigan had an opportunity to give what they get. The "Thanks and Giving" promotion offered the chance to win cash from a "jumbo scratch card" if their name was drawn for the possibility of winning up to $3,000. The casino's PR manager Mike Dini said that guests would earn points by playing, and their names would be added to the weekly drawing for the opportunity to donate to one of eight Tribal Council-selected local charities. "We thought it was a nice way to give back. And we want to do this for our guests." The casino matched the value of guests' scratch card winnings, and the guest could choose which of the eight charities would get the money. (The Morning Sun)

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